Hard not to. But those were before the days of government bailouts and auto industry layoffs that threaten to send concepts the way of the Edsel or to ho-hum practicality.

On this year's auto-show circuit there aren't a lot of concepts, and none is far-out flashy.

And though it's highly unlikely we will suffer boring concepts, they were becoming more realistic even before the economy's reality check.

"Ten years ago many concept vehicles weren't ever expected to make it into production," said Jeff Schuster, executive director of forecasting for J.D. Power and Associates. "Those days are gone. It's been an evolution, and they've just taken it down another level."

"It was much more a let's-get-down-to-business kind of thing," Bruce Belzowski, associate director and assistant research scientist of the Automotive Analysis Division at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, said of concepts at the Detroit Auto Show.

"Remember when Ford did the Think [2000]? You looked at that and said, 'No way is this going anywhere,'" Belzowski said.

Concepts have become more practical because people want to see something they can buy within the next two to four years, said Ed Welburn, global vice president of GM Design. "That said, there needs to be a level of fantasy because that helps us to develop our brands further."

In Chrysler's heyday, it would have had five fantasy cars with virtually no production bits underneath, said Ralph Gilles, vice president of design.

This year's concepts have real-world underpinnings in new-style hybrids and electrics. They aren't extreme.

"It's an exercise to see how far we can push our platforms," he said.

The Chrysler Town & Country EV and the Jeep Patriot EV and Wrangler Unlimited EV are adaptations of the gas version. Even the two ground-up concepts, the Dodge Circuit EV and Chrysler 200C, are based on the Lotus Exige and 300C platforms, respectively.

General Motors and Ford design bosses said they have fewer concepts this year but not because finances are tight: Rather, they decided to focus instead on products that will be in dealerships soon.

"The last thing I would want to do is have a concept vehicle steal the spotlight from a new-production vehicle," Welburn said.

"We spend a lot of money on concept cars. I would say we have spent slightly less on concept vehicles in the last couple of years, but only because of the new products," said J Mays, group vice president global design and chief creative officer at Ford. "And in most cases they are based on a design language that was developed from our portfolio of concepts early on."

The MKR from 2007, for example, was created to convey a new Lincoln language, Mays said. By next year, every Lincoln except the Town Car will speak it.

That's a major reason concept cars are important.

"Sometimes they're there to test out future design language. Sometimes they are trying to get some buzz for a particular technology. For a while it was E85,"Belzowski said.

In other cases, there's a direct line from a concept to production.

GM, for example, is showing the Chevrolet Orlando and Beat as concepts though they are set for production: The Beat as the Spark and Orlando as, well, Orlando.

"Automakers are like parents. They don't call their own children ugly," Schuster said. "So [concepts are] a way to gauge reaction to something before they have to completely lock it down."

This is why the Cadillac Converj and Lincoln C are on the circuit.

"Chicago is a very upscale, urban market. I'm very interested in the feedback we might get from that show," Welburn said.

But concepts are expensive and time-consuming to design, build and promote, the automakers say.

They take about a year or year and a half from start to finish at a cost of anywhere from a half million to $2 million, Gilles said.

Still no one can conceive of a future without concept cars.

Said Mays: "The only thing I can tell you is that when I hang up the phone with you, I've got to go work on a concept."

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These are the concepts scheduled to grace the turntables in Chicago.

Chevrolet Orlando: Orlando bowed in Detroit, and GM said it would be a 2011. Based on the recently introduced Cruze compact sedan, Orlando is a "multipurpose vehicle." The second and third rows in the seven-seater fold flat into the floor for carrying cargo, like a minivan.